Letters
LETTERS Our House Divided To the Editor: I read with interest "Our House Divided" (April 1982) and the letters that followed it in the May issue. Rabbi Schulweis painted one scenario. I would like...
...I reply to the woman, ^But you're not Jewish...
...But Rabbi so-and-so (who's not Orthodox) said all 1 have to do is feel Jewish and I and my future children will be Jewish...
...He won...
...These are examples of Ahavat Yisrael that have occurred to me...
...We reserve the right to edit for publication...
...Two years ago, upon graduating from rabbinical school, I went on my first job interview...
...Incidentally, Mishnah, Tosephta, Talmud, halachic midrash, codes, commentaries and response form a substantial part of the rabbinic curriculum of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion...
...The prohibition that was issued three years ago by the Chief Rabbis of Jerusalem against praying in mixed seated synagogues (even at the expense of forgoing hearing the Shofar) is not a new issue...
...Only 130 years ago, all Jews were Orthodox...
...Orthodox rabbis have prohibited such services ever since mixed seating was introduced by the first reformers (around 1800...
...Once one assumes authority to decide which halachot are central and which are peripheral, one has made the halachah subject to one's own authority and not vice versa...
...By assuming such freedom, which the halachic structure itself does not grant, Sacks places his personal values and priorities above the "authority" of the halachah that he purportedly accepts...
...Nowhere is the supremacy of Sacks' personal predilections more evident than in his characterization of kashrut and Shabbat as "the most central elements of halachah...
...The tragedy of modern Jewish life is that we are divided into "denominations" rather than united as Jews...
...Wouldn't a movement that "accepts the authority of halachah" demand that its rabbis (not to mention its laypeople) observe all of the mitzvot...
...I reserve my judgments of Jewish "invalidity" to the arrogant, the hypocritical and the intolerant among our people...
...If moment does not continue this kind of dialogue, who will...
...The freedom to interpret halachah "in a somewhat more liberal vein" is, in reality, a modernist, non-traditional approach to halachah...
...Federations across the country today are opening up (though very slowly) and bringing frum people into the fold...
...Why not, for instance, choose the halachot of niddah or shatnez...
...Yet one would get the picture from Rabbi Schulweis and his Reconstructionist, Reform, and Conservative colleagues that Jewish bias, discrimination and non-unity is monopolized by the Orthodox...
...Sacks' halachic priorities are those of the Conservative movement...
...This does not mean that everything is hunky-dory in Beit Yisrael...
...Only signed letters with a complete return address can be considered...
...I'm a Reconstructionist, as I believe he was...
...At one synagogue, I asked the community to introduce a mechitza into their Saturday morning services since it would allow my wife and me to participate "as equal partners" in the service...
...All letters should be typed, double-spaced, and sent to the moment Editorial Office, 462 Boylston Street, Suite 301, Boston, MA 02116...
...Ultimately, halachah is a legal system that demands total obedience...
...Admission into the community mishpachah does not mean acceptance of different ideas...
...What about Rabbi Schulweis' examples...
...Do Rabbis Schulweis, Schaalman, Skiddell and Cohen know how far they are prepared to go or how . far their congregants will let them go...
...An applicant to the rabbinic program of the Jewish Theological Seminary is required to swear in writing that he observes the laws of Shabbat and kashrut...
...But how am I, as an Orthodox rabbi, supposed to relate to a husband and wife (he is Jewish, she is not) when they walk into my office and say, "We're about to have our first child...
...None of the regular participants objected—only those who didn't come disliked the idea...
...It is the descendants of those Orthodox Jews who are assimilated today, but it is those of us who have found suitable paths to express our Judaism in contemporary life who are keeping Judaism alive in far greater numbers...
...Donna Jill Blacker Minneapolis, Minnesota Letters to the Editor moment welcomes letters from readers...
...All of us are third or fourth generation descendants of Orthodox Jews, who for various reasons widened their interpretations of true Jewish living...
...Maybe, just maybe, if Reform and Conservative had taken a pro, or even neutral stand on this, he might have a leg to stand on...
...Therefore, how in good conscience can any Orthodox rabbi or lay leader sanction mixed seating, which goes against the very being of our religious existence...
...So he says...
...I cannot talk about this easily in the highly non-Jewish academic environment in which I work...
...Halachah makes no such claim...
...it only means joining together to accomplish mutually desirable goals...
...The reasoning is simple—mixed services according to traditional thought violates a Biblical injunction...
...Two points in particular strike me: Conversion—I can understand the dilemma of a non-Orthodox rabbi who converts a non-Jew according to halachah...
...Thank you also for Harold Schulweis' editorial and thank him for writing with both insight and the compassion I feel, even if the compassion is mixed with confusion...
...This is particularly apt advice where halachah is concerned...
...Will you officiate at the naming ceremony...
...I count myself proudly among them, and I admire any Jew who struggles conscientiously to find an authentic Jewish lifestyle, whether or not he or she "accepts the authority of the halachah...
...Indeed, anyone could identify any halachot he personally felt important to be "the most central...
...My emphasis...
...Reform and Conservative Jewry, as well as the secular organizations, all spoke about, and opposed, passage of the Packwood-Moynihan Tuition Tax Credit Bill, which all Orthodoxy favors...
...His invitation to dialogue amounts to this: "Notwithstanding that you are ignorant mumarim, incapable of intelligent discussion with talmidei chachamim such as myself, I am willing to enter dialogue with you in the interest of the unity of the Jewish people...
...I know how far I am prepared to go (and have gone) halachic-ally in quest of such unity (after all, I am faced with this question every day...
...Sacks' position is as wrong-headed as it is insulting...
...So where were Reform and Conservative when Orthodoxy needed them...
...Rabbi Richard A. Block Riverside, Connecticut Filling the Gaps To the Editor: The newspapers were filled with headlines about Lebanon, and I was surrounded by an uneasy silence within the Jewish community of the Twin Cities...
...We in our post-Enlightenment, western (predominantly Christian), civilized smugness draw a distinction between religious and civil life...
...Its graduates have considerably more knowledge of the halachah than Rabbi Sacks has of the Reform rabbinical curriculum...
...Thank you once again for breaking the silence, for consistently articulating my own concerns and doubts...
...I can assure him it is not...
...She responds with tears in her eyes,"We're not...
...Shirley Gould Skokie, Illinois To the Editor: One of the continuing obstacles to Jewish intrafaith dialogue of the type Rabbi Andrew M. Sacks claims to welcome (in his letter of June 1982) is the uninformed self-righteousness he exhibits...
...While being interviewed for one particular Hillel position that year, I was told that as an Orthodox rabbi, I had nothing to offer the students...
...There are reasoned voices—as far away as Israel...
...As I read the articles on the West Bank, especially Harkabi's and Mann's, I felt my instinctive guilt responses to my own ideas and feelings as an American Jew relax...
...The rabbis asked (Erubin 13b), "Why was the halachah fixed in agreement with the rulings [of the school of Hillel...
...I was not disappointed by your timely June issue...
...All that was important to him was that I should not be appointed...
...On a different note, the story on Harold Abrahams was the first review of "Chariots of Fire" that addressed some of my own observations and that I would love to incorporate into a Sunday school curriculum...
...In my view, he has the personal and religious right to do so, but he has no right to criticize others who do likewise...
...We in Hillel have been working for such a relationship for 50 years...
...And that is the key to the dilemma...
...Claiming to represent "a valid approach to the halachah," Sacks accuses Reform rabbis of being minimally exposed to halachah which "many"of our leaders have "abandoned...
...Thus, according to Jewish law, the child is not Jewish so a Jewish naming ceremony is not necessary...
...Walter M. Kaufman New York, New York To the Editor: I am moved to respond to the question posed in the smug, snobbish letter of Arthur E. Gilbert: Can the Reform or Conservative Jewish movements show me third or fourth generation Jews who are observant...
...Look around at the Soviet Jewry rallies and Israel Independence parades and you'll see both kipot and uncovered heads on the men and you'll see modest dresses and blouses on the women as well as shorts and sleeveless blouses...
...Feelings of disloyalty abound at every level...
...The leader of the opposition to my application didn't give me the courtesy of coming to my interview...
...Who would accept such an invitation...
...I do not know Reconstructionism's position on Tuition Tax Credits...
...Apparently Rabbi Sacks is of the school of Shammai...
...I would like to paint a second...
...They're explicitly commanded in the written Torah, unlike the vast majority of the kashrut and Shabbat halachot, which are rabbinic in origin, and which, in the latter case, the rabbis themselves described as "mountains suspended by a hair...
...Firstly, having accepted the proposition that Jewish law is subject to a wide variety of legitimate interpretations, Sacks is in no position to hold himself out as having "accepted the authority of halachah," which itself permits no such latitude...
...I am proud to say that my father, alav hasholom, born in 1872 in Europe, said to us, "One can't be a Jew in America the way one was a Jew in the old country" and encourged us to find the way to maintain our Judaism within the demands of American life...
...So what does that prove...
...At a cultural fundraiser, no one even spoke of these events at intermission...
...You always seem to publish what I need to read when I need to read it...
...Rabbi Schulweis and his respondents call for a relationship he labels "mishpachah...
...Both sides have a lot of thinking to do about their respective positions before the Jewish community returns to the uniformity that everyone likes to think we should have...
...Chaim Casper Kingston, Rhode Island To the Editor: Rabbi Shulweis makes a great plea for Orthodox cooperation in matters of interest to Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jewry...
...All too often, the non-Orthodox are demanding that my religious peers and I accept ideas that deny everything we hold holy...
...My level of discomfort had reached a peak, and I was anxiously awaiting the next issue of moment...
...The Torah and halachah do not...
...I think he is behind the times...
...In my experience, most Conservative rabbis, like their Reform and Reconstructionist counterparts, give to the halachah "a vote, but not a veto" in their Jewish life decisions, and they're candid enough to admit it is so...
...It is impossible to answer such a question, since he, like other Orthodox leaders, insists on his own concept of "observant...
...Rabbi Shulweis should understand that cooperation works two ways...
...Because they were kindly and modest" and because they studied, seriously and with respect, the views of those with whom they disagreed...
...Please keep on...
...It is not going on in the synagogues and Jewish community centers, at least not here...
...Finally, those who sincerely seek dialogue with Jews of other viewpoints on matters of common concern would do well to refrain from gratuitous insults and to remember Micah's injunction "to walk humbly with your God...
Vol. 7 • July 1982 • No. 7
